Is Cherie Blair our own Hillary Clinton?

Thursday 20 September 2007 11:27 BST

Time of change: Cherie's memoirs may be an opportunity to settle old scores

Her hair is styled into a new neat but stylish longer bob and has been coloured mahogany with fetching lowlights. The familiar pillar-box lips are alluringly glossed and glowing skin made-up to air-brushed perfection. The severe polo neck and restrained earrings are a world away from her old exotic, if erratic, dress sense.

The first thought that strikes Mrs Blair's friends is that this is not quite the Cherie they know but, rather, a person who bears an uncanny resemblance to someone else. This is the British Hillary Clinton: smiling but sovereign, wide-eyed but sure of herself. She is similarly determined to leave her mark and sees herself as a continuing part of "Brand Blair" - not for Cherie sad banishment to the ranks of ex-Downing Street wives.

It is also an image sculpted very consciously for the American audience - a sign of the British former first lady's transatlantic ambitions.

Not that Mrs Blair has any plans to run for Downing Street - Gordon Brown can rest assured of that. Instead, she is breaking with tradition once again and selling her memoirs for a reported £1 million - a sum large enough to guarantee that she will have to produce some explosive detail from her Downing Street years to earn back the money.

The decision by Mrs Blair (she now only uses her old professional name, Booth, in her legal work) to write her memoirs has surprised even her close friends.

She has kept the matter private over the summer and insisted that any dealing about the book be conducted out of the public eye. Kate Jones at sports and media agency ICM negotiated the deal with publisher Little Brown, to the surprise of senior literary agents, who knew nothing of the talks. She has also refused a ghost writer.

"This is very much about accessing the American market as well as settling scores at home," says one family friend. Setting the domestic record straight is, however, also something Mrs Blair is anxious to do.

One event that former No 10 insiders say tipped her decision to write her account of the years at the top was Alastair Campbell's memoirs, which caused ructions and resentment in the tightly-knit former Blair circle.

Emails traded between old friends during the summer dwelt much on Mr Campbell's "solipsistic" chronicle of Mr Blair's period in power. Many of those mentioned, including Peter Mandelson and Cherie, were said to be furious about disobliging accounts of incidents involving them. Cherie is said to have been particularly angry at the account of what Mr Campbell lambasts as her misjudgment over the Bristol flats and the controversy over advice she allegedly received from the conman Peter Foster, then boyfriend of her aide Carole Caplin.

"She certainly doesn't feel she was fairly represented in this book," says one ally. "It was all about Alastair saving the day when things went wrong - in fact, Cherie helped make a lot of days go well, but somehow that didn't get talked about. Now she wants her say."

The Blairs have spent their summer, including a yacht cruise with businessman Bernard Arnaud, head of the luxury goods empire LMVH, planning the post-power period and how to manage the transition in their lives. Publishing sources close to the couple say that Mrs Blair was keen to prod her husband to write his memoirs sooner rather than later.

On one of her visits to New York, the conversation turned to how important it is for major figures to publish as soon as possible after their departure from office. Cherie, says a fellow guest, was "agog". The former PM has spent time in New York since the summer seeing publishers. But he has made clear that his memoirs will not appear this side of a general election and possibly not for years if Mr Brown is re-elected. "He knows he owes that to Gordon," says one of the PM's aides. Bob Barnett, Mr Blair's agent in New York, says: "We're look forward to the book very much, but not talking timings right now." He denies any involvement in the Cherie book.

Another senior publishing source there adds that the Blairs are following the Clintons in publishing "his and hers" memoirs and took advice from the former president and his wife who are close friends. Hillary also published her story first. "It did no harm at all - in fact it kept them in the news for longer," the publisher said. "The same goes for Brand Blair."

Mr Blair has made clear that he has different priorities. He has just been on his first trip to the Middle East in his role as peace envoy, is setting up his foundation, and has lured former aide Ruth Turner to be his chief of staff. Jonathan Powell, his close aide in Downing Street, is also said to be weighing up an offer to join the "Blair in exile" team, which includes the respected former press spokesman, Matthew Doyle.

Senior London agent Ed Victor says Mr Blair must write his memoirs soon if the book is to do well. "It's like Macbeth says: 'If t'were done when t'is done, t'were well it were done quickly'," he said. "They say a week is a long time in politics. That's also true for political memoirs. They have to be done while memories are still fresh. Ronald Reagan did a multi-million-dollar book deal the day after he left office. That's the way to do it."

Not least in the calculations about when to publish was ensuring a ready supply of money for the Blair household. The couple have student children and seven-year-old Leo growing up, a hefty mortgage on their Connaught Square house ( in which builders have been working all summer on an ambitious redesign) and two Bristol flats bought as investments. Mr Blair's £117,000 pension and staff allowance of £90,000 would cover neither the costs of the international life the couple want to live nor pay for a substantial staff.

They have never paid school fees, but Cherie, who studied in very straightened circumstances, aided by her mother Gail's small income as a single mother, has always been determined that her own children should have more financial support. Both Nicky and Euan have spent time in the US and Kathryn has studied at the Sorbonne.

She frequently takes the children along on foreign trips - Leo was even presented to the Pope on a Vatican visit. They do not live the life of the limitlessly wealthy super-rich but it is clear to all who know Mrs Blair that she is no longer prepared to stint either. As she said on announcing her decision to write the book, she has lived a life and seen things "my grandmother would never have dreamed of ". The desire to leave her mark is deeply felt.

She has made no secret of her anxieties about the couple's financial wellbeing after Downing Street. With their expensive mortgage commitments and her husband tied up with his foundation rather than embarking on the lucrative speechmaking circuit, she has been keen to establish some speedy earnings for the couple.

By hiring Martha Greene, a feisty entrepreneur, as her main aide, she has also signalled that she intends to have a strong and unashamed commercial presence. Mrs Greene is renowned as a sharp deal-maker. When the BBC produced a documentary film about Mrs Blair shortly after she left Number 10, it was suggested at one point that Mrs Blair might be remunerated. In the end, her team acknowledged that receiving payment for the film so soon after leaving Downing Street would look bad. Her main source of income to date has been speaking engagements in the US.

Life after Number 10 is always a comedown and Mrs Blair is not a woman to relish struggling with practicalities. For many weeks she did not even have a washing machine and relied on delivering the family laundry to a friend's house. "There is a bit of her which looks at acquaintances like Hillary Clinton and thinks: 'Why the hell should we have it hard - we've given a lot of years to Tony's job,'" says one friend. "This is Cherie's me-time." Having turned down some social engagements for the next weeks, she says she plans a "hard-working autumn" (now we know why) and is striving to lose some extra pounds gained over the summer by working out in Champneys and following an exercise regime.

She has been seen in her old legal firm, Matrix Chambers, and told colleagues there she would be using her office again after conducting her work from a small office in Downing Street. Matrix sources also say she is set to take on a major case in the autumn - whether that will fall victim to the decision to move ahead fast with her memoirs is uncertain.

At the wedding party for Jonathan Powell and the writer Sarah Helm in the summer, Mrs Blair was in spontaneous form in a casual brown-and-white spotted dress, no tights and wedges. She still moves among the crowd in conscientious style, particularly enjoying gossip about holidays and clothes. Conversation about the Brown Government is scrupulously avoided. "You wouldn't want to be the one to tell her it's all going very well without Tony," jokes one leading member of the Brown team.

The first pages that the whole of political London will turn to in the book will be her account of the strain in her husband's relationship with his ambitious and difficult Chancellor.

Mrs Blair made no secret of her growing dislike for Gordon, including an outburst this time last year at her husband's final party conference when Mr Brown lavishly praised the outgoing PM, only for Cherie to hiss, "Well that's a lie," in front of an agency journalist. Brownites are apprehensive about a resurgence of the "family at war" theme in Labour, having co-opted and smoothed over much of the old Blair-Brown schism by giving rising young Blairites such as David Miliband key jobs.

Whatever the state of the new PM's deliberations on when to go to the polls, he would be well advised to get there before next October, when the determined Mrs Blair finally gets her say.